Interesting IT Articles and Tech News: Topic 7 (eCommerce)

Topic 7: eCommerce

eCommerce is huge and is still growing. It may seem easy to set up an online store but bear in mind that since everyone can start an eCommerce business effortlessly, a successful one requires executing complicated marketing strategies such as SEO and building your brand organically on your social media pages. We will list challenges and strategies implemented by companies all around the globe as well as other interesting information about this topic.

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List of Interesting eCommerce Tech News

This article provides information on the upcoming plans for Singapore to become an e-commerce hub. This article shows how ASEAN will collectively cooperate to make the countries’ e-commerce scene more vitalized.

2. Singapore tops another list – This time, for the size of our online shopping carts

This article focuses on the e-commerce market which has been exploding within Singapore, which surprisingly, is the only country in Southeast Asia that shops more after working hours, and we are the number one in basket size among SEA countries.

Mobile First indexing means that Google’s crawlers will start to parse through the links and pages in the mobile page of websites before they move on to the desktop or main pages. Google will start looking at pages with the same level of scrutiny that it looks at desktop pages, meaning that their SEO needs to be top notch for site owners to avoid traffic falls. This traffic falls will happen especially for sites that use an outdated system that converts desktop pages into a mobile-friendly variant on the fly with poor search engine optimization. Google said that it took this decision because most of its search traffic comes from mobile devices and its search engine should also reflect the same situation.

A cookie is a data file created by a website and stored by your web browser where Internet searches, such as flights, are stored for the next time you visit. Before booking an airline ticket or a hotel accommodation, we usually tell ourselves to clear our search history or browse the web using incognito mode to prevent companies from being able to track out Internet footprint. However, airlines do not utilise big data analytics by analysing a potential customer’s Internet footprint and hence, you will find similar flight prices whether your browser is cleared of cookies or not.

5. Alibaba Cleans Up ‘Gray Market’ for Some Prestigious Brands – Labels That Open Tmall Stores Get Help in Curbing Unauthorized Vendors

This article talks about how e-commerce giant Alibaba is eliminating the grey market for prestigious brands. This article also gives a summary and flow chart of the Online Gray-Market for branded goods in China.

6. Planning to IPO in 2019, Qoo10 has quietly grown into Singapore’s top e-commerce destination

This article gives a brief history of the popular e-commerce site Qoo10, and how it has risen to become one of the powerhouses in Singapore’s e-commerce scene. It also discusses the ‘rising tide’ caused by the entrance of global e-commerce brands like Amazon and Alibaba in the region, and how this impacts the local market, brands and consumer behaviour.

7. How Namogoo Is Preventing ‘Online Journey Hijacking’ For Top E-Commerce Brands

Namogoo is a technology company that helps online retailers solve a newly-defined problem faced by top e-commerce brands – Online Journey Hijacking. When a consumer is browsing on an e-commerce site, they might be exposed to unauthorized, injected pop-ups and banner ads that promote similar products to what they were shopping for. These are not served by the online retailer and are actually driven by malware that is injected into a consumer’s web browser or device. The unwanted distractions damage a retailer’s brand reputation and divert customers away to competitor sites – leading to losses in revenue for retailers and an interrupted customer experience for shoppers.

Research has shown that shoppers tend to search for visual images before they make a purchase. Therefore, optimised product images can drive customer acquisition for e-commerce websites. For Google, they partnered with Getty Images to create a new search experience for users, such that it displays indexed photos and direct traffic to the publisher website instead of just the image link.

9. Three Emerging E-Commerce Fraud Threats (And How To Defend Against Them)

This article mentioned the three different types of fraud that we might encounter as the e-commerce industry is set to boom in the near future. They are as followed: 1) Mobile commerce fraud, 2) The upsurge in downmarket fraud and finally 3) Shopping bots. All these frauds are more targeted towards the retailers and less so for the commercial users. The article also highlighted various ways in which online retailers can protect themselves from these frauds.

There are various benefits of E-commerce. Some examples include improved speed of delivery, Improved market reach, improved customer service, better inventory management and most importantly reduced cost.

The world’s greatest shopping bonanza, bigger than America’s Black Market and Cyber Monday combined is none other than China’s Singles Day. Every November 11th, online shopping giants will create a 24-hour online shopfest with sales as much as US$17.7 billion in 2016 on Alibaba sites. China’s online spenders will spend an estimated US1.2 trillion throughout 2017 rising to US1.6 billion in 2018.

According to Experian’s Global Fraud and Identity Report, fraud is a major concern for 72% of businesses, while the problem still remains unsolved for many. With small and mid-sized businesses being the particularly vulnerable ones, this article talks about a few effective steps that SMB retailers can take to battle online fraud. The ways include to team up with third-party security providers, train staff to build an experienced team to scrutinize orders, monitor transactions and set order limits, analyze transactions based on true digital identities, and balance customer experience with risk management.

Subscription commerce is paving way for the grocery industry. A perfectly crafted content experience is designed to help users through each stage of the buyer journey. From purchasing ingredients to ordering whole meals, Blue Apron offers a personalised subscription based grocery/food shopping on their website and mobile application. The company also advocates green sustainability in food and by sharing the same values, the firm would be able to retain customers in the long run thus sustainable revenue for Blue Apron.

As a customer buying goods and service over the Internet, it is crucial for businesses to make their customer experience seamless and convenient. Thus, what better way than utilizing automation like chat platforms and AI-enabled chat bots to provide real-time, conversational and possibly proactive assistance to their potential customers. This omnichannel experience designed to incorporate multiple real-time channels provides a more seamless relationship with your customers.

Search engine platforms will now need to justify how ranking algorithms work. This is in light with EU’s new plans to target “harmful” trading practices that allow tech giants to impose unfair trading conditions on companies that rely on their platforms. Under the rules, search engines will also need to provide companies with “upfront” information about how their ranking algorithm works and assurances that “that the ranking is conducted in good faith”. They will also need to tell businesses if they can pay to bump up their prominence in search results. Also in 2017, EU fined Google for 2.4billion euros for abusing its search engine dominance to “give an illegal advantage” to its own shopping service over rival offerings.

Although not being a very new introduction, this platform has paved the way for increased use of online transactions in B2C segments of Singapore. SingPost, over the past 3 years has improved its POPStation accessibility as well as innovation to maximise convenience, both for itself and for the consumers. More sizes of collection lockers are available, more stations are available and more security are available. Postman’s jobs are also made much easier this way.

Digital voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Now and native language recognition in AI have empowered a new shift towards a conversation based e-commerce. The article mentioned that people will gradually discover the convenience and ease of voice commerce and even increasingly rely on it for online shopping. One of the best examples would be to ask Alexa to place an order to be shipped from Amazon.

The article lists 7 different user engagement metrics that influence a business website’s SEO. Certain factors that caught my attention include dwelling time, return visits and having driving directions and click-to-call metrics.

This article talks about the new type of e-commerce, called O2O (Online to Offline) commerce. O2O is a business strategy that draws potential customers from online channel to make a purchase in physical stores. It identifies customers in the online space, such as through emails and internet advertising, and then uses a variety of tools and approaches to entice the customers to leave the online space.

This article introduces the history as well as the future development of Amazon, the e-commerce giant as well as the leading innovation force in the e-commerce industry. It presents Amazon in different layers, including logistics, cloud service, hardware as well as its moonshots goals. Amazon Go and Amazon Airship become the giant’s next step to transform e-commerce industry and changes people’s mindsets about online retailing and physical stores.

In theory, getting an online purchase delivered within minutes is every consumer’s dream. In practice, it is however not that easy. Commercial drones can, however, travel at up to 100mph and deliver goods under 5lbs at a low cost of $1 per shipment. One example would be Amazon Prime Air which has been tested out in several international locations to get goods to customers in 30 minutes or less.

The article covered 7 E-commerce marketing facts, such as the fact that Men reported spending 28% more online than women during the past year and 43% of online shoppers have made a purchase while in bed, 23% at work, and 20% from the bathroom. Today, Mobile E-commerce accounts for more than 31% of total sales, where the omnichannel experience is growing with voice search and augmented reality continuing to alter the online shopping experience.

This article is about the 6 most effective social media advertising, namely Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Snapchat. It briefly touches on the benefits of using social media platforms for advertisements and goes into more detail for each of the social media platforms for advertisement, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages for each of the social media platforms and brings up the cost of advertising such as the cost per click (CPC) and cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) for some of the platforms for comparison.

Oobah butler who once used to write fake comments for businesses decided to open a fake restaurant that doesn’t exist in the shed of his backyard via TripAdvisor. With the help of his family and friends in writing fake reviews (but with certain consistency), he managed to climb up to be the top ranking restaurant on TripAdvisor. As such, he was flooded with phone calls and emails from “customers”.

The article points out several possible ways in which blockchain can be implemented directly into the eCommerce process to make eCommerce more efficient.

The main ways in which blockchain could improve eCommerce are lowering the fees by removing the need for middlemen through the usage of programmable money, thus benefiting both retailers and customers and increasing transparency in the eCommerce process, thus benefiting the systems of cashback and loyalty programmes, advertising, referral programmes, affiliate programmes and inventory management.

This article summarises seven of the biggest Google algorithms update of all times in which one must know to understand about Search Engine Optimisation. It details these algorithms uupdatesdo and allows us to know how should we improve websites content, wordings and take notice of other affecting factors.

Google has debuted ‘auto ads’, which is a new ad format that scans a page and determines what kind of ads are appropriate, where to place them and how many to run. Publishers who participated in the beta testing phase experienced a 10 to 15% increase in revenue. The use of AI or machine learning in auto ads enables Google to analyse how well the ads perform and how to place better ads in the future.

In late 2016, Alibaba’s eCommerce experimented with a VR eCommerce experience. Goods can be accessed via a virtual reality (VR) headset or through a $0.15 cardboard frame for their smartphone. Once plugged in, shoppers can use their phone to wander the aisles of a virtual store like Macy’s or Costco.

This article shared how the company Treepex successfully used the essence of viral marketing to increase its brand recognition by simply making a fake prototype product to galvanize public interest. It also tells us that an effective viral marketing campaign allows your message to spread fast yet at a low cost.

Free delivery and returns are unsustainable for many entrepreneurs who are turning away from offering online shopping. For many small businesses, e-commerce has allowed them to explore new markets and enabled significant growth. But for some, online trading hasn’t been smooth sailing. The problem is such that some small businesses are actively turning away from online trading. According to Barclaycard’s research, more than a fifth (22%) of bricks and mortar retailers choose not to sell online due to concern about the costs of managing delivery and returns.

In a survey of SEO trends for 2017 and beyond, voice search stood at the third spot. People that use voice search use conversational words and longer sentences. Voice searches are mostly about local content and users desires immediate results. With these characteristics, websites can optimize their SEO through methods like structured data, claiming listings, getting mobile friendly and having an FAQ page.

Furniture retailer’s head of digital reveals the brand is bringing on a new online-based commerce platform and shares details of a new in-store tool that bridges the gap between physical and digital engagement. At present, Fantastic Furniture is using a point solution to provide product recommendations and limited merchandising capability online. The biggest thing Fantastic Furniture is looking forward is to get out of our new platform is merchandising capability and optimizing product listing results based on profitability, and what customers like.

The demand for crypto-supported payments has never been higher with the emergence of cryptocurrencies into the mainstream. The Bpay.io system allows online retailers to directly accept cryptocurrencies and receive payments in their choice of major currency e.g. EUR, USD etc.

35. How Alibaba’s ‘new retail’ is changing the future of retail in China and the world

The article talks about the concept of ‘new retail’ which involves the integration of both e-commerce and traditional bricks-and-mortar commerce to provide a seamless and integrated shopping experience. The customer is placed at the centre of this new ecosystem. Shoppers can now enjoy both the personal touch associated with traditional commerce as well as convenience and engagement associated with e-commerce through ‘new retail’.

The article discusses how Amazon has patented a “Smart Mirror” to revolutionize the way they currently run Amazon Wardrobe (Amazon Prime). These smart mirrors are augmented reality systems that combine images reflected by a mirror with images transmitted from the screen behind the mirror.

37. E-commerce Brands Are Opening Up Stores – and Showing That Retail Still Has Life

Ever since the rise in popularity of e-commerce, it has affected the business of brick-and-mortar stores significantly. However, traditional retail might be struggling, but digital native brands like Everlane, a clothing company, and Casper, a mattress startup, are showing that there’s still room to reimagine the in-store experience. Both companies are opening brick-and-mortar store but the offline consumer experience remains important.

This article is about how e-commerce giant Alibaba is looking to expand into food delivery, an increasingly competitive area, by buying over Ele.me, a food delivery platform. This gives Alibaba access to the delivery personnel of Ele.me.

With the prevalence of e-commerce as of now, these are some distinguishing factors that have made ASOS stand out from your average e-commerce retailer. The few factors that have attributed to its success include its ongoing investment in technology, focus on growth, accessibility of mobile devices and its penetration in international markets. It’s global strategy of free shipping and free returns was a huge enticement to customers. With warehousing and delivery being one of ASOS’s top priorities, it has lead to efficiency in its delivery system.

Often, we are unsure if we can trust the reviews being posted online or not before we make our purchase. Conversely, the company have to think of ways to protect their reputation from negative feedback. So to solve those issue, the researcher uses a computer software to detect false feedback and ensure the integrity of e-commerce trust management systems. The software has an algorithm that can identify and block falsified feedback being sent to a site’s trust management system and so make it more robust against rating manipulation attacks. Not only that, the feedback verification scheme uses a clustering algorithm to group similar ratings together and defines the majority rating.

Hennes & Mauritz (also known as H&M), the Swedish purveyor of cheap but trendy clothing, admitted in a earnings report on Wednesday it is struggling to get a handle on e-commerce, a surprising admission from a company that has outmaneuvered countless retailers globally, particularly department stores and specialty apparel chains, for years and peppered the planet with its stores. For years, H&M’s successful formula has relied on new stores in new markets, with less emphasis on robust e-commerce, a tack that is now coming to bite it. However, from the news article, we can tell that this business strategy is not really working for H&M anymore as it is reported that H&M have the greatest number for stores that will be closing down this year, which was never the case in H&M’s 20 years history.

For B2C marketing, common tactics are search engine marketing and through affiliate programs. They redirect you to the page the company intends you to go to. However, what happens when you reach a 404 error page? Most sites would show a static page dejecting users from proceeding. There’s a better way of handling this situation.

43. How companies use personal data to charge different people different prices for the same product

This article shows how companies are able to actually use the information about their customers’ spending habit and geographical location to actually engage in price discrimination. They are able to overcharge a person on products which they have a trend of buying frequently and lesser to people on the fence.

E-commerce marketplace, Shopee, plans to start monetising its platform by introducing paid ads as its aim is to become Southeast Asia’s mobile commerce destination of choice. Ways to monetise on e-commerce platforms include listing fees, commissions and paid ads. Shopee is currently considering using paid ads to monetise their company. Shopee is also set to continue focusing on mobile commerce since mobile penetration in Southeast Asia surpasses computer usage, as more now do surfing on their mobile devices rather than on their computers.

Gifto (a company) decided to combine ecommerce and offline shopping with camera commerce. They developed this program, as they realised that offline shopping is the best way for product discovery, provides proximity and intimacy with a product, while ecommerce provides easier checkouts. (Camera Commerce) can bridge this gap, and provides a unique way of product discovery (closest to the in-store experience) using a phone camera, assisted by computer vision Artificial Intelligence technology, and the ease of online checkouts.

46. How An Ex-Con Turned His Life Around And Built an $80k per Month Ecommerce Business

From age 11 to 27, Robert Nava spent most of his time in correctional facilities. When trying to pursue his dreams in the business field, he met with numerous failures but finally achieved success with National Parks Depot – now a major online store that sells outdoor gear. How did he do it? In the beginning, since Nava didn’t have sizeable enough Facebook followers, he invested $60 into Facebook ads. To his surprise, his $60 ad budget made him $1000 on sales just on the first day. Just by rinsing and repeating the strategy, his business skyrocketed in a month!

Unilever’s $1 Billion acquisition of the Dollar Shave Club is the fourth-most valuable M&A deal of a venture-backed e-commerce company. This time, it is a telling tale about whether the consumer products industry can get a digital business model right. The details of the deal are blasphemous because of DSC’s low-profit margins, making it seem more like it belongs in the tech sector than the consumer product industry. Dollar Shave Club has shown that the shaving market could be transformed–thanks to an online subscription model, a memorable brand and a strong consumer experience. Needless to say, it’s disruption to the retail world is still unfathomable to some.

Amazon introduced Amazon Key, which allows couriers to unlock the front door of your home, so that parcels purchased online can be sent directly into your houses, without needing for you to be present to accept the delivery. This can be seen as further improving the e-commerce process for consumers, as now, cthe ustomer simply do not have to worry about being present to receive parcels or collect them at some designated collection point. Now customers simply click and buy items online and the items will be in their home: no more headache of setting a schedule around delivery times! This works by having a special lock installed to home front doors, which can be unlock online, using an app. A camera installed can also record the live-stream of the delivery taking place.

49. A problem that keeps warehouse work from being fully automated has just been solved

Intralogistics services have responded quickly to changing market needs where demand is much higher than before along with shorter product life cycles. The development of industrial robotics and artificial intelligence have developed the groundbreaking solution to identify and handle unsorted items especially when the world demands exceed the ability of man to manually sort out the goods, they do so at a speed and accuracy that exceeds human capability.

50. These hustlers make a living off WeChat’s thriving underground ecommerce

Micro-shops aren’t restricted to any category of product, but Wang’s specialty is imported goods from Australia. She left Beijing and moved to Melbourne about two-and-a-half years ago, joining China’s far-flung diaspora. Now, she’s a stay-at-home mom with two kids, so the flexibility of a micro-shop suits her well. At her peak, she made more than US$4,000 a month. Intimacy comes into play when Qingqing sells her skincare products. Through WeChat, she chats with clients about their skin condition and what kind of result they’re looking for. She then recommends suitable products and follows up with customers weeks after their purchase for feedback.

Apps had the biggest share of e-commerce transaction in Q4 2017 among North American retailers with shopping apps. These results make it clear that retailers should not only be investing in mobile commerce (m-commerce), but in their apps specifically, especially considering that m-commerce is projected to take off in the coming years, with apps potentially leading the way.

The article talks about the possibilities of eBay accepting cryptocurrency payments in the future. Currently, it is still unclear as to whether eBay will accept cryptocurrency for future payments, they are still experimenting with the system and are not disclosing any information. As eBay is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the world, the acceptance of cryptocurrency for payments will have a huge impact on all the users, the community and the market. We will have to watch and monitor closely on what happens.

Japanese automaker Nissan will begin testing an autonomous taxi service in parts of Yokohama, Japan, starting in March, reports CNBC. The service, dubbed “Easy Ride,” will transport passengers along a three-mile route through the city with safety drivers behind the wheel ready to take over if needed. Nissan’s initial tests will utilize a specially outfitted version of the company’s Leaf electric car and will be primarily aimed at gathering data on consumer preferences.The automaker will ask riders about their experience and how much they’d be willing to pay for a similar ride.

On a daily basis, people conduct over 3.5 billion searches in Google to research products and services before buying. 60% of the traffic by the users who made google searches will usually remain at the top 3 organic search results, while 75% of users don’t click past the first page. This article will give insights into how business can better optimize their web pages so that they can rank in Google top 10, attract the right people, and grow their revenue in 5 essential ways.

E-commerce website Rakuten plans on releasing their own cryptocurrency, that can be used with all its services like their travel company, video service etc. This will help eliminate the difference in exchange rate so all international users will be able to access their services at the same price. They hope that this will help attract more international customers and thay are already seeing an international demand.

In today’s digitally dominated society, e-commerce is booming in every country, even in the unexpected ones like India. However, when businesses delve into ecommerce, they ought to exercise precaution, so as to prevent failures that even hottest tech start-ups are subjected to. One such example is Shop.ca, who is among Canada’s hottest tech start-ups. Founded in 2011, Shop.ca multi-merchant e-commerce website, selling various kinds of products, from clothes to homeware and beauty products. However, Shop.ca recently filed for bankruptcy.

Achieving high rankings on search engines is vitally important to the success of e-commerce businesses as this means more traffic which in turn results in higher sales and a higher bottom line for the company.

This article provides insights on how a Seattle-based local portrait and wedding photographer Dani Weiss use Search Engine Optimization to turn his website that wasn’t performing so good in search results or getting any traffic and conversions because of the stiff competition in Seattle around.

Rebel is a company that seeks to strengthen retailers’ eCommerce strategy by using email marketing with the incorporation of interactive experiences such as galleries. Now, it is taking it one step further by adding a new feature that allows consumers to complete their purchase within the email itself.